So lets reform welfare laws so that they only provide money and support for unemployed residents of Mars or Alpha Centauri. As lazy as they are, many welfare recipients are quiet resourceful, I bet they could McGuyver some kind of spacecraft and extrasolar tenement housing. This solves so many of our societies problems that I am amazed that we haven't pursued this before.
Sounds like a losing situation for the Merchants. They are required by the creditor to make the purchasing process simple and convenient, but are stuck with the financial burden of the loss when someone takes advantage of that.
Personally, I would prefer a credit card agreement that would require me to prove who I am to make a purchase. I write "Check ID" on the signature field of my credit/debit cards. I get called on it so rarely that I know someone could absolutely steal and use my card, but there's a little part of me that hopes any mugger or pickpocket would be too nervous to try it.
If it costs $450M/launch, and you presume it has a crew of 6 (some had 5, some had 7), and you suggest it costs $75/astronaut... then sending up an empty shuttle would cost $0, naught, nil, nothing, be free, etc.?
You're looking at it from the wrong angle. A shuttle launch costs $450M, Soyuz costs $55M per astronaut. You want to send 6 people to ISS. Which method is cheaper?
I like your point, in simple terms of $$$ cost per people delivered than Soyuz makes sense. However, keep in mind that the shuttle also has the benefit of additional cargo space and abilities to perform other LEO missions while its up there. Those costs are hard to calculate.
Then we have these "tea party" idiots. loudmouths simply looking for 10 minutes of fame who really have no desire to protect freedom.
I suppose you attended one of their rally's and spoken with a few of them about their views before making that judgment. Oh whats that? You didn't? Oh, you heard from someone that tea partiers are all ultra conservative nutbags. You saw on tv how redneck they all look? right.
Two serious points I have to make. One is that these "tea parties" have become the only outlet that many conservatives have for expressing ourselves politically. Many of us feel totally disillusioned by Republican party, and are reaching for some other outlet. Tea parties are pointedly not organized under a consolidated traditional leadership, they are intended for all different flavors of "conservatives" to come together to speak against things that we all oppose.
Second, I hope you are not seriously hoping and waiting for an uprising. Aside from the tragic death and devastation and the decades of anarchy before proper government would be restored, who exactly do you think would lead that uprising? (hint: its the ultraconservative nutbags that own most of the guns).
Dude, insurance companies are a nightmare to deal with. Your standard flood insurance doesn't cover looting. You'd need to file a claim for stolen goods, which means filing a police report. Good luck proving that you had the appropriate locks and security in place (if you can find it). And if said looter gets smashed by watery death while inside your store, his next of kin could come back and sue you for negligently failing to tsunami-proof your place of business (you had warning didn't you?).
Seems easier to just stick around to defend your store, then miraculously survive a wall of watery death.
If you have nothing to hide, then what's the problem with it? The system isn't going to change any time soon, so why make a fuss over it?
Because that's just not the American way. By your argument, I should allow police to search my home whenever they feel like it. Hell, I should probably just surrender my firearms and offer to quarter some troops in my home, just to make sure my family doesn't get out of line.
Suppose a manned mission to mars was going to take 4 people to mars and back. Now they say you should drink 8 8-ounce glasses of water a day. Your food will provide about 20% of the total fluid intake so you need to add more water to remain healthy. But lets ignore that and the entire if your active you need more and so on and take a safe constant of 8-8ounce glasses of water per day. Now there is 128 ounces in a gallon and 8 8-ounce glasses is 64 ounces. Times that by the 4 people and you have 256 ounces or 2 gallons of water for each day. O
Survival experts will tell you that a good rule of thumb for survival situations is 1 gallon per person per day. This is for drinking, cooking, and washing. More would be better for long term comfort. Of course, this comes from experience with terrestrial wilderness survival, I don't know how the conditions in a spacecraft/habitat would affect that. Certainly you would have recycling systems as you mentioned. If we are talking about just water for human consumption, then in a perfectly closed environment with minimal waste I would imagine you could continuously recycle say 5-6 gallons per person.
But given that Hydrogen and Oxygen are also primary fuel and air components, your concept of "one stop shopping" at a fueling station on the moon seems very practical.
I think its cute that you think Congress would allow itself to be limited to only the powers granted to it by the Constitution.
In all seriousness, it seems likely that the Federal Government would encourage enforcement at the state and local level in the same ways they enforce speed limits and drinking ages. By offering Federal funds on the condition that states enforce the "suggested" requirement.
Its funny, I am actually re-reading the Ring World series now. Will Smith should have no involvement with a Ring World film whatsoever. He just doesn't fit any of the characters (not that that would really prevent him from being cast though).
And interestingly on the topic of crappy unnecessary sequels, Ring Worlds Children blows. I mean, it really blows. Its awful.
I took drivers ed and my road test in Maine, which if I remember correctly had exactly 2 roundabouts at the time. Neither of which were near me.
I've recently moved to MA, specifically the greater Boston area. To someone not experienced with roundabouts (we call them rotaries) they can be confusing. For example, does the person entering the rotary in the outside lane have right of way over the person moving from the inside to the outside to get to an exit? Are you ever required to move to the inside lane, or are you permitted to stay in the outside lane at all times. Does the driver in the inside lane have a right to expect someone in the outside lane to yield for a lane change?
Of course, there are also regional customs to consider. Specific to my situation, many drivers neglect to signal their intention to change lanes, and right of way is generally awarded to the more aggressive driver. These may not jive with the written law, but they are nonetheless local customs that are generally followed, and violating them can create unsafe conditions.
Long winded post, I apologize. My point is that rotaries suck, the proper procedures are poorly understood and commonly disregarded. They are unsafe for everyone, regardless of how good a driver you are.
in situations where the driver was moving at a reasonable speed for conditions and still couldn’t possibly have stopped their vehicle in time to avoid the collision.
I think you hit on a good point there, in that drivers have an obligation to make decisions based on their driving conditions. Posted speed limits are generally considered to be the maximum legal speed under optimal driving conditions. Under sub-optimal conditions (i.e. darkness, weather, reduced visibility, etc) the driver can still be faulted for driving under the posted speed limit if that speed is recklessly fast. Anyone that has ever driven on the highway in a heavy snowstorm could tell you that driving 65 MPH is stupid.
So if some guy, drunk, jumps in front of my car after hiding behind two parked cars, and i hit and kill him going 10km/h under the speed limit.. I'm still at fault?
Did YOU take drivers training? Granted I'm not American, so maybe you guys do, in fact, have really dumb laws in this regard.
I am an American, and I did take drivers training. In the US operating a motor vehicle requires licensing (I apologize, but I am not too familiar with other countries laws here). As part of that license, the driver assumes responsibility for collisions with pedestrians. In your example the driver may not be at fault in that the can't be charged or sued, but they are generally considered still responsible.
That doesn't absolve you of the responsibility. In that scenario the collision might be unavoidable, and thus you will not likely be hit with criminal charges, but ultimately you are still responsible. Operating a motor vehicle is a licensed privilege that comes with a great deal of responsibility (though few people treat it that way). When you sit in the drivers seat you assume responsibility for everything that car does while operating it.
Even if that collision is unavoidable, if a kid darts in front of your car and you turn him into a hood ornament, that will haunt you for a long long time.
Personally, I think I would like knowing that the guy trying to land my plane is not completely incapacitated with terror, and is surrounded by a team of other calm and collected colleagues to offer support. I think remotely piloted passenger aircraft are a great idea.
Plus, you could get away from the current system of having pilots hop around the country for days at a time before they can go home and sleep in their own bed. I like the thought of having my pilot always be well rested.
I think you (maybe we all) are just misinterpreting each other when we say "race". To some race is synonymous with cultural group, to some race simply means a classification based on observable hereditary differences (fair notice, that language is stolen from Wikipedia). That's why race is such a challenging concept to discuss, its very definition is culturally dependent.
The cultural bigotry comes into play when people make the assumption that cultural norms and behavior are somehow directly linked to ancestral grouping. This is just not the case. I think this is the point you are trying to make (flame me if I'm wrong).
Much of it is almost certainly cultural and environmental.
Actually, IQ tests conducted in Africa by Africans result in an average score of 65. African Americans score about an 85, due mostly to difference in nutrition in growing up as you point out.
IQ has to heritable to some extent, or we would never have evolved from our ape-like ancestors to be smarter.
IQ alone is a dangerous measure of intelligence. It is highly susceptible to testing biases, and there is no real understanding or consensus about what it measures. In response to your point, the logical questions to ask are things like "who made those tests" and "what kind of std. deviation did they find". Personally, I find it more likely that the difference in IQ scores between Africans and African Americans is that African Americans are more likely to have received the kind of formal education that prepares them for standardized tests. Also if you want to dip into almost racism, it is not inconceivable that during the hundreds of years in which Africans were taken as slaves that there was some selection of the more intelligent individuals (meaning the ones not taken were possibly less intelligent). This is not a theory that I tend to agree with, but I can see how one could make the argument.
Regarding the so called "Nature vs. Nurture" debate, the rough numbers that I remember being thrown around in my Cognitive Psych classes were that before age 5-6 something like 60% of intelligence ability is hereditary while 40% is environmental. As the individual matures, this shifts closer towards 50%/50%. Some very interesting work has been done looking at separated paternal twins raised in different environments. There is clearly a strong genetic component to intelligence, and there is just as clearly a very strong environmental component.
Well I will concede to your possible example, because regulation of interstate commerce is one of the express purposes of our Federal Government.
There don't need to be 50 different regulations on Corn, some states don't produce it! But the agricultural economies in (for example) Maine and California are quiet different, of course they need different regulations.
Darn, and I was fond of the FDA and the 40 hour work week...
If the people that live in your state are also fond of those things, your State government would protect those anyway. Thats kind of exactly how our United States government is supposed to work.
Instead of holding them as slaves, we keep them so deep in debt that they can't really make any decisions for themselves without first asking us if it's ok.
And so far this has worked out really really well for us, if only we didn't have to borrow Trillions from the Chinese to make it happen. Say what you will about real old world British style Imperialism, but at least its more profitable than what we're doing now.
I can't decide which part of that is funnier: The thought that the US Federal Government will hold itself to the same standard it sets for everybody else, or that the Federal Government will show respect for States Sovereignty in tax matters.
So that trillion dollars is just going to be paid by other folks, right?
That's just how we roll here. That's how we spent ourselves out of what I like to call the Second Great Depression. That's how we got into a financial nightmare in the first place, just so we could show the world how awesome we are by fixing it. That's also how we financed two ridiculously successful wars. Hell, we did such a good job winning those wars that we just decided to stick around over there and keep winning them.
Seriously now, how in the world will this not significantly affect anything? My insurance company is no longer able to refuse to cover high risk patients or people who already have huge costs, so now they will turn around and raise my premiums to balance their actuarial tables. And now I can no longer walk away from the whole expensive mess without paying a fine.
To the GP: Reasonable people realized long ago that their interests were not being represented in this debate. Reasonable people will remember this come mid-terms, and hopefully will place their votes not along party lines, but for candidates that actually give a damn about what their constituents say they want.
My state already has (I live in MA), and I knew that when I moved here. However, I know that this pooling of cost and risk was only statewide, so the state only had to set requirements that were appropriate to the people of MA. Now we are trying to find a system that will provide the same level of care for the same cost for everyone in the country, which is significantly larger than MA alone. If each of the 50 states pass their own versions of this thing, and each state passes versions that work for them then fantastic. I'm concerned because I don't think that a solution at the federal level is a suitable replacement for individual solutions tailored to each state.
I agree, this is kind of exactly the thing that they wanted to avoid 300 years ago by giving States the right to govern themselves.
U.S.A is a socialist country and have always been a socialist country.
You pay taxes and those taxes and those taxes are spent on "the common good": roads, schools, military, police, firebrigades...
Healthcare is just one more ting on the list of what your taxes pay for
Way back in the day, the US started as kind of a blank slate of personal freedon/responsibility. Over time we have as a society determined that things like road construction, schools, military, police, firefighting are things that are best done by a shared service provider that we all agree to pay into.
Healthcare is one thing that many people think is something that should be shared and administered by Government. There are also many people that disagree (myself included). Regardless of whether the product is something that should be consolidated, I personally feel that my wishes have not been represented during this process (alongside many others) and that the manner in which the bill has been drafted and passed is shady and irresponsible. I'll call attention to the much-abused talking points of "back room deals" or the time Nancy Pelosi said that she would not rest until the bill was passed, regardless of the protests of the people.
I disagree that the US is socialist, I disagree that this bill would make it socialist. And on a completely unrelated but topical note I feel that this bill will not resolve the problems that people want it to resolve.
Every single civilized country in the world has some form of socialized medicine but the US. It's been the great shame of our society for decades.
I understand your arguments, and in some respects I agree with you. However I must disagree with you on this point. Our society is one that was founded on personal freedoms, and in exchange a high degree of personal responsibility. I prefer a system where I take responsibility for my own healthcare and my family's. I do not like a system where I must pay taxes to fund a bureaucracy that assumes responsibility for myself and everybody else all at the same time.
I want to know that I am paying a fair cost for the services that I receive. I also want to know that I am not footing the bill for somebody else. I am charitable, to a limited extent I am ok with contributing to a pool that provides care to people in dire need. I do not want to be required to contribute to that pool through taxes, and I want to be able to have some level of control with where that money is spent.
To be fair, I do carry insurance. It is a small group plan through my employer. Given the current state of the healthcare system, I find this small group plan to be an acceptable distribution of risk. I am ok with this because I elected to join and I have the ability to elect to leave (except that I live in MA so I would be subject to fines). I would rather live in a country where Insurance was not necessary, and healthcare is something that is affordable to everybody.
In a society that prides itself on personal freedoms and responsibility, it seems ridiculous that I will be required to share the healthcare costs of every other citizen (through taxes). Conversely it seems ridiculous that I would force the cost of my own care onto others).
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So lets reform welfare laws so that they only provide money and support for unemployed residents of Mars or Alpha Centauri. As lazy as they are, many welfare recipients are quiet resourceful, I bet they could McGuyver some kind of spacecraft and extrasolar tenement housing. This solves so many of our societies problems that I am amazed that we haven't pursued this before.
Sounds like a losing situation for the Merchants. They are required by the creditor to make the purchasing process simple and convenient, but are stuck with the financial burden of the loss when someone takes advantage of that.
Personally, I would prefer a credit card agreement that would require me to prove who I am to make a purchase. I write "Check ID" on the signature field of my credit/debit cards. I get called on it so rarely that I know someone could absolutely steal and use my card, but there's a little part of me that hopes any mugger or pickpocket would be too nervous to try it.
If it costs $450M/launch, and you presume it has a crew of 6 (some had 5, some had 7), and you suggest it costs $75/astronaut... then sending up an empty shuttle would cost $0, naught, nil, nothing, be free, etc.?
You're looking at it from the wrong angle. A shuttle launch costs $450M, Soyuz costs $55M per astronaut. You want to send 6 people to ISS. Which method is cheaper?
I like your point, in simple terms of $$$ cost per people delivered than Soyuz makes sense. However, keep in mind that the shuttle also has the benefit of additional cargo space and abilities to perform other LEO missions while its up there. Those costs are hard to calculate.
There, I said it.
Then we have these "tea party" idiots. loudmouths simply looking for 10 minutes of fame who really have no desire to protect freedom.
I suppose you attended one of their rally's and spoken with a few of them about their views before making that judgment. Oh whats that? You didn't? Oh, you heard from someone that tea partiers are all ultra conservative nutbags. You saw on tv how redneck they all look? right.
Two serious points I have to make. One is that these "tea parties" have become the only outlet that many conservatives have for expressing ourselves politically. Many of us feel totally disillusioned by Republican party, and are reaching for some other outlet. Tea parties are pointedly not organized under a consolidated traditional leadership, they are intended for all different flavors of "conservatives" to come together to speak against things that we all oppose.
Second, I hope you are not seriously hoping and waiting for an uprising. Aside from the tragic death and devastation and the decades of anarchy before proper government would be restored, who exactly do you think would lead that uprising? (hint: its the ultraconservative nutbags that own most of the guns).
Dude, insurance companies are a nightmare to deal with. Your standard flood insurance doesn't cover looting. You'd need to file a claim for stolen goods, which means filing a police report. Good luck proving that you had the appropriate locks and security in place (if you can find it). And if said looter gets smashed by watery death while inside your store, his next of kin could come back and sue you for negligently failing to tsunami-proof your place of business (you had warning didn't you?).
Seems easier to just stick around to defend your store, then miraculously survive a wall of watery death.
Be careful though, that little standard pink hoverboard won't work for surfing the Tsunami. If you want to run on water, you need power.
If you have nothing to hide, then what's the problem with it? The system isn't going to change any time soon, so why make a fuss over it?
Because that's just not the American way. By your argument, I should allow police to search my home whenever they feel like it. Hell, I should probably just surrender my firearms and offer to quarter some troops in my home, just to make sure my family doesn't get out of line.
We are better than this.
Suppose a manned mission to mars was going to take 4 people to mars and back. Now they say you should drink 8 8-ounce glasses of water a day. Your food will provide about 20% of the total fluid intake so you need to add more water to remain healthy. But lets ignore that and the entire if your active you need more and so on and take a safe constant of 8-8ounce glasses of water per day. Now there is 128 ounces in a gallon and 8 8-ounce glasses is 64 ounces. Times that by the 4 people and you have 256 ounces or 2 gallons of water for each day. O
Survival experts will tell you that a good rule of thumb for survival situations is 1 gallon per person per day. This is for drinking, cooking, and washing. More would be better for long term comfort. Of course, this comes from experience with terrestrial wilderness survival, I don't know how the conditions in a spacecraft/habitat would affect that. Certainly you would have recycling systems as you mentioned. If we are talking about just water for human consumption, then in a perfectly closed environment with minimal waste I would imagine you could continuously recycle say 5-6 gallons per person.
But given that Hydrogen and Oxygen are also primary fuel and air components, your concept of "one stop shopping" at a fueling station on the moon seems very practical.
I think its cute that you think Congress would allow itself to be limited to only the powers granted to it by the Constitution.
In all seriousness, it seems likely that the Federal Government would encourage enforcement at the state and local level in the same ways they enforce speed limits and drinking ages. By offering Federal funds on the condition that states enforce the "suggested" requirement.
Its funny, I am actually re-reading the Ring World series now. Will Smith should have no involvement with a Ring World film whatsoever. He just doesn't fit any of the characters (not that that would really prevent him from being cast though).
And interestingly on the topic of crappy unnecessary sequels, Ring Worlds Children blows. I mean, it really blows. Its awful.
I took drivers ed and my road test in Maine, which if I remember correctly had exactly 2 roundabouts at the time. Neither of which were near me.
I've recently moved to MA, specifically the greater Boston area. To someone not experienced with roundabouts (we call them rotaries) they can be confusing. For example, does the person entering the rotary in the outside lane have right of way over the person moving from the inside to the outside to get to an exit? Are you ever required to move to the inside lane, or are you permitted to stay in the outside lane at all times. Does the driver in the inside lane have a right to expect someone in the outside lane to yield for a lane change?
Of course, there are also regional customs to consider. Specific to my situation, many drivers neglect to signal their intention to change lanes, and right of way is generally awarded to the more aggressive driver. These may not jive with the written law, but they are nonetheless local customs that are generally followed, and violating them can create unsafe conditions.
Long winded post, I apologize. My point is that rotaries suck, the proper procedures are poorly understood and commonly disregarded. They are unsafe for everyone, regardless of how good a driver you are.
in situations where the driver was moving at a reasonable speed for conditions and still couldn’t possibly have stopped their vehicle in time to avoid the collision.
I think you hit on a good point there, in that drivers have an obligation to make decisions based on their driving conditions. Posted speed limits are generally considered to be the maximum legal speed under optimal driving conditions. Under sub-optimal conditions (i.e. darkness, weather, reduced visibility, etc) the driver can still be faulted for driving under the posted speed limit if that speed is recklessly fast. Anyone that has ever driven on the highway in a heavy snowstorm could tell you that driving 65 MPH is stupid.
So if some guy, drunk, jumps in front of my car after hiding behind two parked cars, and i hit and kill him going 10km/h under the speed limit.. I'm still at fault? Did YOU take drivers training? Granted I'm not American, so maybe you guys do, in fact, have really dumb laws in this regard.
I am an American, and I did take drivers training. In the US operating a motor vehicle requires licensing (I apologize, but I am not too familiar with other countries laws here). As part of that license, the driver assumes responsibility for collisions with pedestrians. In your example the driver may not be at fault in that the can't be charged or sued, but they are generally considered still responsible.
That doesn't absolve you of the responsibility. In that scenario the collision might be unavoidable, and thus you will not likely be hit with criminal charges, but ultimately you are still responsible. Operating a motor vehicle is a licensed privilege that comes with a great deal of responsibility (though few people treat it that way). When you sit in the drivers seat you assume responsibility for everything that car does while operating it.
Even if that collision is unavoidable, if a kid darts in front of your car and you turn him into a hood ornament, that will haunt you for a long long time.
Personally, I think I would like knowing that the guy trying to land my plane is not completely incapacitated with terror, and is surrounded by a team of other calm and collected colleagues to offer support. I think remotely piloted passenger aircraft are a great idea.
Plus, you could get away from the current system of having pilots hop around the country for days at a time before they can go home and sleep in their own bed. I like the thought of having my pilot always be well rested.
I think you (maybe we all) are just misinterpreting each other when we say "race". To some race is synonymous with cultural group, to some race simply means a classification based on observable hereditary differences (fair notice, that language is stolen from Wikipedia). That's why race is such a challenging concept to discuss, its very definition is culturally dependent.
The cultural bigotry comes into play when people make the assumption that cultural norms and behavior are somehow directly linked to ancestral grouping. This is just not the case. I think this is the point you are trying to make (flame me if I'm wrong).
Much of it is almost certainly cultural and environmental.
Actually, IQ tests conducted in Africa by Africans result in an average score of 65. African Americans score about an 85, due mostly to difference in nutrition in growing up as you point out. IQ has to heritable to some extent, or we would never have evolved from our ape-like ancestors to be smarter.
IQ alone is a dangerous measure of intelligence. It is highly susceptible to testing biases, and there is no real understanding or consensus about what it measures. In response to your point, the logical questions to ask are things like "who made those tests" and "what kind of std. deviation did they find". Personally, I find it more likely that the difference in IQ scores between Africans and African Americans is that African Americans are more likely to have received the kind of formal education that prepares them for standardized tests. Also if you want to dip into almost racism, it is not inconceivable that during the hundreds of years in which Africans were taken as slaves that there was some selection of the more intelligent individuals (meaning the ones not taken were possibly less intelligent). This is not a theory that I tend to agree with, but I can see how one could make the argument.
Regarding the so called "Nature vs. Nurture" debate, the rough numbers that I remember being thrown around in my Cognitive Psych classes were that before age 5-6 something like 60% of intelligence ability is hereditary while 40% is environmental. As the individual matures, this shifts closer towards 50%/50%. Some very interesting work has been done looking at separated paternal twins raised in different environments. There is clearly a strong genetic component to intelligence, and there is just as clearly a very strong environmental component.
Well I will concede to your possible example, because regulation of interstate commerce is one of the express purposes of our Federal Government.
There don't need to be 50 different regulations on Corn, some states don't produce it! But the agricultural economies in (for example) Maine and California are quiet different, of course they need different regulations.
Darn, and I was fond of the FDA and the 40 hour work week...
If the people that live in your state are also fond of those things, your State government would protect those anyway. Thats kind of exactly how our United States government is supposed to work.
Instead of holding them as slaves, we keep them so deep in debt that they can't really make any decisions for themselves without first asking us if it's ok.
And so far this has worked out really really well for us, if only we didn't have to borrow Trillions from the Chinese to make it happen. Say what you will about real old world British style Imperialism, but at least its more profitable than what we're doing now.
I can't decide which part of that is funnier: The thought that the US Federal Government will hold itself to the same standard it sets for everybody else, or that the Federal Government will show respect for States Sovereignty in tax matters.
So that trillion dollars is just going to be paid by other folks, right?
That's just how we roll here. That's how we spent ourselves out of what I like to call the Second Great Depression. That's how we got into a financial nightmare in the first place, just so we could show the world how awesome we are by fixing it. That's also how we financed two ridiculously successful wars. Hell, we did such a good job winning those wars that we just decided to stick around over there and keep winning them.
Seriously now, how in the world will this not significantly affect anything? My insurance company is no longer able to refuse to cover high risk patients or people who already have huge costs, so now they will turn around and raise my premiums to balance their actuarial tables. And now I can no longer walk away from the whole expensive mess without paying a fine.
To the GP: Reasonable people realized long ago that their interests were not being represented in this debate. Reasonable people will remember this come mid-terms, and hopefully will place their votes not along party lines, but for candidates that actually give a damn about what their constituents say they want.
My state already has (I live in MA), and I knew that when I moved here. However, I know that this pooling of cost and risk was only statewide, so the state only had to set requirements that were appropriate to the people of MA. Now we are trying to find a system that will provide the same level of care for the same cost for everyone in the country, which is significantly larger than MA alone. If each of the 50 states pass their own versions of this thing, and each state passes versions that work for them then fantastic. I'm concerned because I don't think that a solution at the federal level is a suitable replacement for individual solutions tailored to each state.
I agree, this is kind of exactly the thing that they wanted to avoid 300 years ago by giving States the right to govern themselves.
U.S.A is a socialist country and have always been a socialist country.
You pay taxes and those taxes and those taxes are spent on "the common good": roads, schools, military, police, firebrigades...
Healthcare is just one more ting on the list of what your taxes pay for
Way back in the day, the US started as kind of a blank slate of personal freedon/responsibility. Over time we have as a society determined that things like road construction, schools, military, police, firefighting are things that are best done by a shared service provider that we all agree to pay into.
Healthcare is one thing that many people think is something that should be shared and administered by Government. There are also many people that disagree (myself included). Regardless of whether the product is something that should be consolidated, I personally feel that my wishes have not been represented during this process (alongside many others) and that the manner in which the bill has been drafted and passed is shady and irresponsible. I'll call attention to the much-abused talking points of "back room deals" or the time Nancy Pelosi said that she would not rest until the bill was passed, regardless of the protests of the people.
I disagree that the US is socialist, I disagree that this bill would make it socialist. And on a completely unrelated but topical note I feel that this bill will not resolve the problems that people want it to resolve.
Every single civilized country in the world has some form of socialized medicine but the US. It's been the great shame of our society for decades.
I understand your arguments, and in some respects I agree with you. However I must disagree with you on this point. Our society is one that was founded on personal freedoms, and in exchange a high degree of personal responsibility. I prefer a system where I take responsibility for my own healthcare and my family's. I do not like a system where I must pay taxes to fund a bureaucracy that assumes responsibility for myself and everybody else all at the same time.
I want to know that I am paying a fair cost for the services that I receive. I also want to know that I am not footing the bill for somebody else. I am charitable, to a limited extent I am ok with contributing to a pool that provides care to people in dire need. I do not want to be required to contribute to that pool through taxes, and I want to be able to have some level of control with where that money is spent.
To be fair, I do carry insurance. It is a small group plan through my employer. Given the current state of the healthcare system, I find this small group plan to be an acceptable distribution of risk. I am ok with this because I elected to join and I have the ability to elect to leave (except that I live in MA so I would be subject to fines). I would rather live in a country where Insurance was not necessary, and healthcare is something that is affordable to everybody.
In a society that prides itself on personal freedoms and responsibility, it seems ridiculous that I will be required to share the healthcare costs of every other citizen (through taxes). Conversely it seems ridiculous that I would force the cost of my own care onto others).